Critical Essay by R. B. Kershner

In the following essay, Kershner discusses the symbolism of a single apple in Joyce's story “A Painful Case.”

The opening paragraph of “A Painful Case” has been an interpreter's delight because of Joyce's bravura performance in delineating character through furniture, much as Flaubert does in introducing Charles Bovary. The orderly, ascetic furnishings of his room, the manuscript translation of Hauptmann's Michael Kramer, the white wooden shelves with the hand-bound copy of the Maynooth Catechism all conspire to prepare us for the man whose aesthetic and intellectual aspirations are neatly circumscribed by his compulsive habits and unvarying routine. When, four years later, he has added Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Gay Science, we...